IN PERSON: Fourth-generation Bates farmer carries on tradition

VALLEY CENTER ---- Ninety years ago, Gilbert and Beatrice Bates
bought 100 acres of quiet, undeveloped land in the middle of Valley
Center and planted dozens of walnut trees, launching the farm that
would become one of North County's most prized rural
attractions.

On any given autumn weekend, those acres bustle with as many as
15,000 visitors in a single day. Wide parking lots fill with cars
where the trees that gave the Bates Nut Farm its name once
stood.

The modern version of the storied farm is owned and run by
Gilbert and Beatrice's great-granddaughter, Sherrie Bates-Ness, and
her husband, Escondido native Tom Ness.

Over the years, the farm has gone from a relatively small walnut
grove to a place where thousands of North County families go to
honor traditions and make memories. This weekend is prime
pilgrimage season at Bates Nut Farm, and it's also when the Bates
family celebrates the farm's 90th anniversary (so if you go,
earlier is better).

Bates-Ness had the true farmer's daughter experience.

"Our whole driveway was walnut shells ---- we didn't have
pavement, we didn't have cement driveways ---- and you would hear
the crackling of the wheels going across," she recalled. "I
remember all the walnut shells sitting in the back, big piles of
them. I remember going down and putting the walnuts into burlap
sacks, helping the guys. My hands would just be black from the
stain."

I caught up with her on Friday, the beginning of one of the
busiest weekends of the year, and we sat in a golf cart beneath a
giant shade tree while a rotation of John Deere tractors pulled
hayrides, eight wagons at a time, around the straw maze.

Bates-Ness was raised on the farm ---- "It was strictly pumpkins
when I was growing up, nothing else," she said ---- and then left
to attend Northern Arizona University.

She graduated from San Diego State University with a degree in
business marketing, and in 1985, the same year that the first of
her three sons was born, she came home.

"There really wasn't a job for me at that point, but my dad
offered me the barn," Bates-Ness said.

She planned to open a gift shop, and her father, Walter Bates,
made her secure her own $15,000 loan to do it. Then she needed a
name, and he joked that she should call it "Farmer's Daughter."

So she did, and present-day visitors can still step into the
store that she started at the age of 24, long before the idea of
running the farm entered her head.

Today, Bates-Ness handles marketing and event coordinating while
her husband manages the business aspects of running a seasonal
"agri-entertainment" destination. They purchased the farm from her
parents on Oct. 1.

"I always had a real passion for the business ---- and still do.
I love creating this experience for people," Bates-Ness said.

Having lived on the farm since childhood, Bates-Ness is keenly
aware of the changes that have taken place on her family's
land.